Alan Watts

You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.

The menu is not the meal.

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.

Treat everyone as if they were a guest in your own house, because in reality, they are a guest in your own world.

For a year, I had all sorts of weirdos coming on to me.

Zen teaches that if we can open up to the inevitability of our demise, we can begin to transform and lighten up about it.

Yet if today has no meaning, the past was a Blank and the future is a Chaos.

Laughing at our mistakes can lengthen our own life. Laughing at someone else’s can shorten it.

If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

The truth is, I think we are a self-less society, not a selfish society. Because we’re so busy now.

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

Any company large enough to have a research lab is too large to listen to it.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.